Movie Reviews
Civil War | Review
Alex Garland’s Civil War depicts a fictional US conflict that is less about conveying a political perspective as it is a tense statement about the normalization of violence and collectively losing sight of the bigger picture.
Poignancy in film is sometimes on purpose, sometimes just coincidence. Civil War is a bit of both. Here is a film that recognizes the diplomatic atmosphere being as strained as it has been in a very long time, but also comes to theaters exactly at the right time when those conflicts are heightened to a worryingly improbable end. Civil War may depict a fictional conflict in the United States, but it’s message speaks to the global increase of violence in our lives driven by the splintering of society towards radical perspectives – in specific those who act upon them and those who pretend they aren’t a threat.
Those exact perspectives aren’t clearly defined in Civil War, which is a detriment to those viewers who are hoping the film will champion their own specific views. Instead, director Alex Garland makes the choice to not explicitly detail the cause of his fictional civil war, but instead realize the greater implications of that conflict on the general population. It recognizes the general opportunity of how things could get out of control here in the US, as if to demonstrate that the systems of our precious constitution are just as susceptible to abuse as anywhere else in the world.
Civil War
Directed By: Alex Garland
Written By: Alex Garland
Starring: Kristen Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley-HendersonRelease Date: April 12, 2024
By not providing a concrete reason for the conflict, Garland’s film suggests the flaws of humanity make it inevitable. He reinforces this theme by peppering in accounts of people who are pretending the war isn’t happening, as if to suggest their ambivalence played a role. The film contrasts the experiences of those people with their heads buried in the sand by spinning a narrative around those who are paid not to: war correspondents.
The story focuses on a renowned journalist Lee Smith (Kristen Dunst) who has made a name for herself covering harrowing atrocities across the globe, and her colleague Joel (Wagner Moura) who lives for the thrill of experiencing the thrill of battle in person. As the civil war is upon the precipice of conclusion, they decide to race to Washington D.C. to try and interview the President of the United states before he is captured by his opposition. In this journey they are joined by Sammy, a veteran reporter who would rather die than stop working (Stephen McKinley-Henderson), and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a young and inexperienced photographer who looks up to Lee.
Lee and Joel are an experienced 2-man crew who have been together through some very dangerous conflicts depicted to the audience through flashbacks. Sammy and Jessie’s involvement thus represents a hazard because they don’t just have to worry about themselves, they have to look out for two people who don’t have the same capabilities as they do. But while Sammy is willingly putting himself in danger and has the wherewithal to know exactly what he is getting himself into, Jessie does not. Joel and Lee’s opposing perspectives on the approach to their work is something that makes their working relationship function, but it creates conflict in regards to Jessie.
Lee is reluctant to bring Jessie in under her belt and show her the ropes because she has seen the worst of humanity and fears Jessie isn’t prepared for it both emotionally and physically. Lee doesn’t want to have to care about someone else because it may compromise her ability to do her own work. Meanwhile Joel is excited to be able to share his enthusiasm for being in the thick of the battle and wants to help Jessie experience this for the first time. For her part Jessie realizes the uncomfortable burden her presence places on the group, but knows that if she wants to further her career this is a golden opportunity she would never get if she played it safe.
In this way, all of them essentially exploit the pain and suffering of others for their living. This experience has essentially numbed them to the motivations of the conflict, which is part of the reason why the film doesn’t spend time commenting on them. Furthermore, it isn’t really possible for Lee & Company to be on one side or the other because the integrity of their craft and personal safety requires them to be ambivalent. In many ways they hide behind it like a shield. While they can’t ignore the conflict, their reasoning to not be on one side or the other is just as selfish as those who are ignoring the conflict.
You could construe this as a criticism of the media, which I think may be valid. But I think the point is the fact that our society is at a point where “sides” are necessary in the first place. This is a bigger criticism of the world’s social development as a whole. Rather than be motivated by the greater good, we’re motivated by selfish desires and we channel that into picking “sides”. At one point in the film, the main characters encounter a man with a gun who has captured and tortured two men because they were stealing from him. He comments on how he had gone to high school with one of them, suggesting the extremes that have become necessary – even in a civilized first-world nation – for individual survival.
Director/writer Garland first made a name for himself in cinema by reinventing the zombie genre for the 21st Century with his script for 28 Days Later. In many ways, Civil War feels like a zombie movie. The world it depicts has fleeting reminders of normalcy amidst a harrowing almost post-apocalyptic fight for survival. There are gripping action sequences with sound design that pummels you into the back of your seat. And yet most of the film is quiet, expressing the void of humanity from this possible future. Garland depicts empty streets with the occasional roving military vehicle, others are littered with the carcasses of cars and equipment abandoned long ago. Like a zombie movie it hinges on humanity’s hubris – despite all our impressive accomplishments we’re still a deeply flawed species.
Kristen Dunst portrays Lee the entire film with the aghast expression of someone who has seen too much. But Jessie’s inclusion in her life is what ultimately breaks her. Not because she witnesses her loss of innocence first-hand, but because Lee sees herself in Jessie. From this outside perspective Lee begins to feel the guilt that she had hid away for all these years. Reporting on these terrible events doesn’t necessarily bring heightened concern from the general public, instead it fuels our tolerance for them.
Civil War offers us the ultimate paradox of our modern information age; the more we know about what is going on, the worse off we are. Truth becomes the enemy not because of what it means to us, but because of our selfish reactions towards it. The film conveys a pulse-quickening tale of survival in a harrowing dystopia of fear towards knowledge. It flies in the face of every horror film where we’re told that the most frightening thing is the unknown.
Movie Reviews
Mortal Kombat 2 Movie Review: Simon McQuoid’s Latest Is A Breezy, Bloody, Sometimes Baffling Time
Warner Bros. has a new movie to put in the ring. Mortal Kombat II, the sequel to the action-filled 2021 video game adaptation that at the very least got the gore right, is here. It’s a breezy, bloody entry that leans heavily on video game characters and logic, a move that should satisfy franchise fans, even if the actual narrative is too weak to win over new converts.
We’re in an era of regular, variably solid video game adaptations. Series like The Last of Us and Fallout, and films such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Werewolves Within, are exemplary, with stories that capture much of what works about the games. On the other hand, adaptations like Borderlands show that it’s still possible to get one wrong. The stakes remain high.
When director Simon McQuoid’s Mortal Kombat graced the screens and HBO Max, it was received with a sizable difference between fans (currently 85% on Rotten Tomatoes with over 5,000 verified ratings) and critics (55% with 299 factored in). It was refreshing to have fights that didn’t skimp on the game series’ violence, but some muddled plotting, a failure to fully capture the game’s feel, and centering the film on an original character (rather than a fan-favorite from the games) were ill-received.
Mortal Kombat II is a bigger and more faithful adaptation in many ways. The tournament actually feels deadly, and many of the fight sequences are sufficiently bloody to accurately reflect the games. The actual narrative falls apart somewhat when you think too hard about it, but it largely works, and certain characters (Kano, Johnny Cage) steal every scene they’re in. If you like your movies bloody with a side of silly, you’re in luck.
Mortal Kombat 2 Has Stellar New Additions
Mortal Kombat II doesn’t waste time in setting the stakes, with an opening fight between Eternia’s King Jerrod and Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford). The helmeted tyrant Kahn’s violent victory allows him to raise Jerrod’s daughter, Kitana, as he comes to rule Eternia thanks to his tournament victories. That backstory sets up the complex journey of adult Kitana (Adeline Rudolph), who fights for Kahn alongside longtime friend Jade (Tati Gabrielle), but has understandable reservations.
Another major element of this iteration is the addition of washed-up action star Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), who is recruited to fight for Earthrealm despite lacking powers. Cage has to fight under the tutelage of Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), alongside mainstays including Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Jax (Mehcad Brooks), Cole Young (Lewis Tan), and Liu Kang (Ludi Lin). Our heroes have to defeat Shao Khan’s warriors to save Earth, all the while preventing him from acquiring an amulet that would render him immortal.
Urban is a stellar addition to the series, with a huge and charismatic personality that fits Johnny Cage and is fun to watch onscreen. Josh Lawson’s dirtbag mercenary Kano gets some fantastic scenes here, and the two add a lot of charm that some other characters may lack. Adeline Rudolph is empathetic and believably tactical as Kitana. Gabrielle’s Jade isn’t given enough key scenes to shine, but there’s clear potential for the character in future iterations.
Baraka (CJ Bloomfield) isn’t the deepest character, but Bloomfield makes him memorable, and his relationship with Johnny Cage is always a fun watch. While Tan’s Cole Young has something to do in Mortal Kombat II, he’s much less of a focus here, as are returning favorites like Hiroyuki Sanada and Joe Taslim’s Bi-Han.
There are new characters, many moving parts, and a narrative that’s more a string of battles than a traditional Hollywood tale, leaving some favorites underutilized. Because of the need to introduce new characters, most of the existing ones are relatively one-note. Kitana and Johnny Cage get ample screen time, even character arcs, and Kano, Baraka, and some others do get standout moments. Most characters, however, remain one-note figures.
Mortal Kombat II Doesn’t Fully Make Sense, but It Mostly Hits Hard
While Mortal Kombat 2 doesn’t have the biggest fights you’ll see this year (that would be The Furious), it does have quite a few memorable ones with great finishers. The final fight with Shao Kahn has a solid ending, and many get standout moments as the movie proceeds. Kitana, Baraka, Liu Kang, Hanzo Hasashi/Scorpion, and Kung Lao all get particularly unforgettable moments.
A more faithful structure also makes this round’s fights feel a bit more like one is playing an actual Mortal Kombat game, which is welcome. Most are well-paced, though a few could use tighter editing. Unfortunately, the story is more than a little muddled. Shao Kahn wants a Maguffin to be unkillable, sure, but if the tournament rules allow an invasion of Earthrealm if and only if Earth’s champions defeat Outworld’s five times, isn’t an immortality-granting amulet the equivalent of steroid use? Where are the referees?
Some characters (like Jade) change allegiances almost at random, with no consistency. There are several moments when characters make choices that don’t make sense, or at least we don’t have enough information to understand them.
Altogether, Mortal Kombat II learned from quite a few of the issues the first film had. It swapped out protagonists for one with a flashier personality, better replicated the game’s elements and structure, and had kills to boot. That’s largely enough to succeed for the kind of film it is, but it still has issues.
There are too many characters to develop in any interesting way, the tournament rules and character plans don’t make total sense, and the pacing is quick in some moments and slow in others. Nonetheless, it’s a delightful outing and feels just like a big ol’ violent video game (complimentary).
Final Rating: 7/10
Mortal Kombat 2 is playing in theaters.
Movie Reviews
1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy
Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around, it’s May 9, 1986, and we’re off to see Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit.
Dangerously Close
I would love to tell you what the point of this film was, but I’m not sure it knew.
An elite school has turned into a magnet school, attracting some “undesirables,” so a group of students known as The Sentinels take up policing their school, but will they go too far?
The basic plot of the film is simple enough, but there is an oddball “twist” toward the end tht served no real purpose and somehow turns the whole thing into a murder-mystery. Mysteries only work when you know you’re supposed to be solving them, and not when you’re alerted to one existing with 15 minutes left.
Decent 80s music, some stylistic shots, absolutely no substance.
Fire with Fire
Oh wait… I may want to go back and watch Dangerously Close again over this one.
Joe Fisk (Craig Sheffer) is being held at a juvenile delinquent facility close a high-end all-girls Catholic school. One day while running through the forest as part of an exercise he spots Catholic schoolgirl Lisa Taylor (Virginia Madsen) and the two fall immediately in love because… reasons.
This film is just so incredibly lazy. The ‘love story’ really can just be chalked up to ‘hormones.’
Last Resort
Once again I am baffled how Charles Grodin kept getting work so much through out the 1980s.
George Lollar (Grodin) is a salesman in Chicago in need of a vacation. He loads up the family and takes them to Club Sand, which turns out to be a swingers resort as well as surrounded by barbed wire to keep rebels out.
There are a lot of talented people in this movie such as Phil Hartman and Megan Mullally, but the film lets them down at every turn with half-baked ideas of jokes. Supposedly, Grodin rewrote nearly the entire script and I think that explains a lot about how this film feels like unfinished ideas. It’s a Frankenstein monster of a script with half-complete ideas that feel like they are from completely different movies.
Short Circuit
Lets just get this out of the way: What in the world was Fisher Stevens doing?
NOVA Laboratory has come up with a new series of military robots called S.A.I.N.T. (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport). Following a successful demonstration for the military, Five is struck by an electrical surge and finds itself needing ‘input.’ After inadvertently escaping the lab, it wands into the life of Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy), who cares for animals and takes Five in. Dr. Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg) is trying to get five back, while the security team wants to destroy it.
Overall, the film is thin, but harmless. The 80s did seem to love a ‘technology being used for the wrong reasons’ theme, and this falls into that camp. What is mind-blowing, however, is Stevens as Ben Jabituya, Crosby’s assistant. Not only is he wearing brown face, but he’s doing a horrible Indian accent and later reveals he was born and raised in the U.S.
His whole character is mystifying.
Honestly, a couple of decades ago I may have recommended this movie, but it’s a definite pass now just for being offensive.
1986 Movie Reviews will continue on May 16, 2026, with Sweet Liberty and Top Gun.
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer
Posted: May 8th, 2026 / 08:34 PM
AFFECTION movie poster | ©2026 Brainstorm Media
Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Rothe, Joseph Cross, Julianna Layne
Writer: BT Meza
Director: BT Meza
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: May 8, 2026
AFFECTION is an odd title for this tale. While it is about a number of topics and emotions, fondness isn’t one of them. Obsession, definitely. Love, possibly. The kind of general warm fellow feelings associated with “affection”? No.
There have been a lot of movies lately in which characters – mostly women – are grappling with false identities and/or false memories imposed upon them, mostly by men.
Let us stipulate that the protagonist (Jessica Rothe) in AFFECTION is not an android or in an artificial reality. However, we can tell something is way off from the opening sequence. A car is stalled on a tree-bordered highway. Rothe’s character is lying face down on the asphalt beside it, possibly dead.
But then the young woman rises, dragging a broken ankle. She experiences a full-body seizure. Fighting to recover, she sees oncoming headlights and tries to run, only to be hit by a car.
The woman wakes up in a bed she doesn’t recognize, next to a man (Joseph Cross) she likewise is sure she’s never seen before. One big confrontation later, the man says his name is Bruce – and that the woman is his wife, Ellie.
Ellie insists that her name is Sarah Thompson, and she is married to someone else, with a son. When she sees her reflection in a mirror, she doesn’t relate to the face looking back at her.
Bruce counters that Ellie has a rare neurological condition that causes her to block out her waking life and believe her dreams are real. This is why they agreed, together, to move to this isolated house, without the kinds of interruptions that can hinder Ellie’s recovery.
The set-up is presented in a way where we share Ellie’s skepticism. But Ellie and Bruce’s little daughter Alice (Julianna Layne) immediately identifies Ellie as “Mommy!” Alice appears to be too young to be in on any kind of deception, so what is going on here?
AFFECTION eventually explains this via a helpful videotape, though it’s so convoluted that viewers watching on streaming may want to replay the sequence to make sure they understand the exposition.
Writer/director BT Meza musters a sense of menace and lurking weirdness, as well as making great use of his location.
We still have a lot of questions, many of which are still unanswered by the film’s end. It may not matter to the points AFFECTION is trying to make, but a better sense of exactly how all this started might help our investment.
As it is, despite a heroically versatile performance by Rothe, a credible and anguished turn by Cross and appealing work from Layne, we’re so busy trying to piece together what’s important and what’s not and how we’re supposed to feel about all of it that it can be hard to keep track of the action as it unfolds.
Agree or not, Meza’s arguments are lucid and illustrated clearly by AFFECTION’s events. However, the movie is structured in a way that becomes more frustrating as it goes. We comprehend it intellectually but can’t engage viscerally.
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